A brick bakery reads as a bakery the moment you add bread. What makes people stop and look is the paperwork: the sign over the door, the prices in the window, the little artisan boast on the wall. Here is where each one goes.

A LEGO street can be beautifully built and still feel empty. Nine times out of ten what is missing is the signage: the speed limits, the street names, the No Entry that tells your eye a real road runs through it. Here is how to place them.

The Last Light Apothecary began as one question: what would actually be on the shelves of a wizard’s shop that had been open for a very long time? Eighty-nine answers later, here is a look inside the sheet and the little world behind it.

Every shop on our street has someone who runs it. The Daily Grind has two: Brenda Hart, who runs it with warmth and standards, and Chicho, the terrier who is fairly sure he runs it instead.

A MOC can be beautifully built and still feel empty. What fills it is rarely another brick: it is the printed, painted, lived-in detail. Here is the small stuff that turns a model into a place, whatever you are building.

Bunting and big builds are the easy part. It's the small printed details, menu boards, price cards, a chalk A-board, that make a brick-built café look real. Here are five, and the sheet that does the heavy lifting.